Monroe County deputy ALPR stalking case

A woman suspected of no wrongdoing was tracked in real time and pulled over by a sheriff's deputy who put her plate on a police surveillance hotlist. Lamar Eliseo Roman, a 28-year-old Monroe County, Florida deputy, had met her on the Apple TV+ set of "Bad Monkey" on February 3, 2026, where he was working a paid security detail; he then used Florida's DAVID driver database and the FCIC/NCIC crime databases to look her up, and entered her plate on a hotlist that alerted him whenever her car passed a license-plate-reader camera. When the plate pinged on February 19, 2026, Roman sped up to 70 mph on U.S. 1 and almost caused a head-on collision before he stopped her. He was arrested on March 10, 2026 on three counts of misusing a law-enforcement database, a third-degree felony, & was fired. On July 1, 2026 he entered a two-year pretrial-intervention agreement that will dismiss the charges if he completes it. Asked why he did it, Roman told investigators he was having a tough month and "saw a shiny thing."

Body-camera footage obtained by 404 Media shows a Monroe County deputy explaining that he used police databases and license plate reader cameras to research and stalk a woman he met on a TV set, telling investigators "I saw a shiny thing."

Background

Roman joined the Monroe County Sheriff's Office in May 2025, and his annual salary until he was fired was $74,474. On February 3, 2026 he was working a security detail on the Big Pine Key set of "Bad Monkey," an Apple TV+ series starring Vince Vaughn and filmed in the Florida Keys, when he noticed a 27-year-old woman getting off the bus for extras. According to the sheriff's office warrant report as quoted by Local 10 News, Roman began whistling at her & catcalled her, "very loudly" saying, "Oh my god, why didn't nobody tell me we were bringing models to (the) set." The two exchanged names & cellphone numbers, and although she told him she had a boyfriend, he pressed her for her contact details, allegedly telling her something to the effect of "I need your name and number just in case I pull you over someday," and sent her a direct message on Instagram that she did not answer.

Database and hotlist surveillance

Investigators said Roman used Florida's Driver And Vehicle Information Database, better known as DAVID, and the Florida Crime Information Center and National Crime Information Center (FCIC/NCIC) databases to look up the extra and enter her license plate into a hotlist that would alert if her vehicle was picked up on any license plate readers. He also ran her name through the agency's identification database to find her driver's license number, then used that to pull her plate, & finally added the plate to a hotlist on an automated license plate reader (ALPR) system that 404 Media identified as Guardian, made by a company it named as Turing. The Guardian system then sent Roman real-time alerts on the woman's vehicle location, which he used to track her; he admitted he had no legal justification & was never required to obtain a warrant. Detectives reviewing the records found that Roman accessed the systems to search for information about the woman several times, sometimes several times a day, from the day he met her through February 19.

License-plate readers are among the fastest-growing forms of mass surveillance, logging over 20 billion license plate scans per month. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes the hotlist mechanism Roman exploited: agencies pre-load a list of plates the system is actively looking for, such as stolen vehicles, and officers can also create their own hotlists, so that when an ALPR camera scans a plate on the list the system sends an alert to the officer in the squad car.

February 19 pursuit and traffic stop

On February 19, 2026, the woman's plate pinged the hotlist while Roman was on patrol, and dashcam video showed him speeding up to 70 mph on U.S. 1 as he passed two dump trucks in a no-passing zone, then an SUV. Investigators said Roman "almost cause(d) a head-on collision while passing as a white truck traveling northbound had to veer off the roadway" to avoid a wreck. About two minutes later he pulled the woman over in the turning lane of the highway at mile marker 10, in front of Bobalu's Southern Café on Big Coppitt Key, & he never logged the stop as required.

The woman told investigators that when she rolled down her window and asked how he had known it was her, Roman responded, "I told you I'd find you and pull you over," and added, "I was hoping your boyfriend was in the car so I can pull him out and give him a hard time." He also asked her why she had not followed him back on Instagram before letting her leave.

At the traffic stop, according to the Monroe County warrant report quoted by Local 10 News, Roman told the woman, "I told you I'd find you and pull you over."

Investigation and recorded admissions

During a March 4, 2026 interview, Roman acknowledged that he had used the sheriff's office databases to search for the woman and told investigators he knew he had erred as soon as he ran the DAVID search. When a detective asked whether he had pursued the woman that day just to say hello, he replied, "Yeah, I know it's stupid." Reason reported his explanation in his own words: "I know it's stupid," Roman told the investigators, "It's a tough month," he continued, "and I saw a shiny thing." The woman told the sheriff's office she did not want to pursue criminal charges against Roman, but the agency pursued them anyway.

Charges, firing, and pretrial intervention

Reporting the day after the arrest, Local 10 News described the booked charge as accessing a computer or electronic device without authority, and the Miami Herald, syndicated by Police1, described it as a felony charge of misuse of law-enforcement computers, computer networks and electronic devices. Reason later reported, citing court records, that Roman was arrested on March 10, 2026 on three counts of misusing a law-enforcement database, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Under Florida law, the offense of accessing a computer, computer system, computer network, or electronic device without authorization or exceeding authorization is a felony of the third degree. The Monroe County Sheriff's Office fired Roman following his arrest, & Sheriff Rick Ramsay said in a brief statement that he was committed to keeping the community informed of significant events in the agency, "good and bad."

Reason reported, citing court records, that Roman was arrested on March 10, 2026 on three counts of misusing a law enforcement database, a third-degree felony, and on July 1, 2026 entered a two-year pretrial intervention agreement that would dismiss the charges if completed.

Roman was released on a $50,000 bond, & as of July 1, 2026 he was discharged of that bond as part of his pretrial. On the same day he entered a two-year pretrial-intervention agreement that, if completed, will result in the dismissal of all charges against him. The agreement remains in force. Michael Soyfer, an Institute for Justice attorney who has brought legal challenges against ALPR surveillance networks, said in a statement:

"The fundamental problem with these systems is that they place private information about people's movements over time in the hands of every officer. Without the constitutional safeguards of a warrant requirement, that predictably allows officers to abuse their access to these systems for things like stalking romantic partners."

Florida Statutes § 815.06 makes accessing a computer, computer system, computer network, or electronic device without authorization a felony of the third degree.

An earlier Monroe County case involved former deputy Jennifer Ketcham, who in November was convicted & sentenced to three years on a set of felonies for using official systems to pass sensitive information to her 19-year-old then-boyfriend, whom authorities described as a drug dealer.

National pattern of ALPR stalking abuse

An ongoing review of media reports and public records by the Institute for Justice has identified dozens of cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024, & the organization says nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs. The Institute for Justice tracker includes the Monroe County case: it notes that in Florida a Monroe County sheriff's deputy allegedly used an ALPR system to track and eventually pull over a woman he met while providing security on a TV set. A Washington Post investigation published August 2, 2026 found that at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing Flock's cameras and other systems.

An Institute for Justice review identified dozens of cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data to stalk romantic interests, with the bulk of the incidents happening since 2024.

The Guardian system 404 Media attributed to Turing is a different vendor from Flock, whose cameras are the subject of the comparison cases below. When 404 Media wrote about the issue in early July 2026, Flock said it was "aware of 15 incidents of abuse," a figure 404 Media, local media, and the Institute for Justice reported was far lower than what they had found; the Washington Post then counted at least 50, & Flock CEO Garrett Langley said the system had "caught a lot of bad cops. It's a ton. It's more than I ever would have hoped." A detective in the Roman case told the victim, according to body-camera footage obtained by 404 Media, that "we've had deputies misuse databases, we've told them over and over again 'that's not what it's for. You see a hot chick, you don't look them up in a database. That's not what it's for.'"

Comparable cases have surfaced across the country. In Shively, Kentucky, officer Asad Zahir conducted 2,048 Flock searches from January into May to track two vehicles registered to his child's mother; the activity was flagged by an AI-powered auditing tool that Flock had implemented, & he was charged with five counts of official misconduct in the fifth degree and five counts of unlawful access to a computer in the fourth degree. In Lufkin, Texas, officer Zachary Anthony Klein, 32, used a Flock license plate reader more than 10,000 times to track an ex-girlfriend & was indicted on charges of tampering with governmental records, abuse of official capacity and misuse of official information. An officer in Kechi, Kansas, was arrested on suspicion of accessing a Flock Safety ALPR database to stalk his estranged wife. Christopher Ingraham of the Institute for Justice told CNN there were "many reasons to think this is only the tip of the iceberg," because many incidents had not been reported or detected.

ALPR-stalking cases by officer, system, and scale

Officer	Place	ALPR system	Whom they tracked	Charges
Lamar Roman	Monroe County, Florida	Guardian, made by Turing	Woman he met on the "Bad Monkey" set	Three counts of misusing a law-enforcement database
Asad Zahir	Shively, Kentucky	Flock	Two vehicles registered to his child's mother, 2,048 searches	Five counts official misconduct, five counts unlawful computer access
Zachary Anthony Klein	Lufkin, Texas	Flock	Ex-girlfriend, more than 10,000 searches	Tampering with governmental records, abuse of official capacity, misuse of official information
Unnamed officer	Kechi, Kansas	Flock Safety	Estranged wife	Arrested on suspicion of unauthorized database access

See also

• Flock license plate readers
• Axon
• Leonardo ELSAG SignalTrace
• Recognition economy
• Anti-privacy legislation